How parents make sense of their young children's expressions of everyday pain: a qualitative analysis.

BACKGROUND

Little is known about the communication of everyday pain between young children and their parents, i.e. when children experience pain resulting from minor injury or illness that occur in everyday life. This study aimed to gain an in-depth understanding of how parents make sense of their young children's expression of everyday pains and how they respond.

METHODS

Parents (n = 48) of children (1-5 years inclusive) participated in focus group discussions at seven children's centres across England where they were asked to describe their children's communication of everyday pain. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data.

RESULTS

Six main themes were identified in the parents' discourse. Parents described children's pain communication as (1) sharing common elements, but unique to each child; (2) having multifaceted pain and non-pain-related purposes; (3) challenging to interpret; (4) influenced by their own pain-related communication; (5) requiring a variety of pharmacological, psychological and physical strategies to manage. The sixth theme that emerged from the data related to parents' dissatisfaction with health care providers, particularly general practitioners' sometimes quick dismissal of parental concerns about their children's pain and illness complaints.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings suggest that parents have well developed, although personal, ways of recognizing and responding to their children's communication of pain, but also experience uncertainty in their judgments. Parents would benefit from information about the developmental aspects of pain and should be included as active partners in their children's pain assessment and management.